Plastics are used to make a variety of items. For example, plastics can be used to make a variety of toiletry items, such as shampoo bottles, deodorant applicators, and tampon applicators, among others. Such items are typically made using a plastics mold. These molds can have, for example, a plurality of cavities shaped to produce the plastic item. The mold can be served by a piping system. In an example, each pair of cavities can be serviced by a pipe of the piping system that supplies the flowable material, such as liquefied plastic, to the cavities via a pair of supply lines coupled to the pipe and the cavities.
Typically, when a cavity experiences a problem, the pipe that services that cavity is deactivated and the production line continues to run until too many pipes are inactive and the production level of the mold falls below a particular threshold. At that point, the production line has to be halted while the defective cavity(s) is repaired. These repairs can take up to a week or more, costing money for each day that the production line is inactive.